Autumn approaching

First week of September gone already. There is definitely a feel of Autumn in the air - cool wind, even when the sun shines, and earlier evenings of course. Lots of trees are showing yellowy or brown tinges and Autumn colour in the garden comes from the lords and ladies, pink autumn-flowering cyclamen, rose-hips and rose flowers. The big pink sedum, which the bees and butterflies love, is beginning to open.

View from the greenhouse across the veg plots & rhubarb

Sedum beginning to flower, rose-hips and a carpet of pink autumn-flowering cyclamen

Lords & ladies glowing proudly

Cold end to the year

During the week before Christmas we had severe storms with violent winds. Thankfully only minor damage here but friends further south were flooded out.

The corrugated roof on the lean-to was lifting off with the wind and the rose arch (tubular metal construction which replaced a previous home-made one a couple of years ago) is flattened. Also a section of roofing-felt on the summer house was blown off. So far nothing serious - but the forecasters are promising more wind and storms for the new year.

Yesterday was fine and sunny and this morning is cold and frosty with just a little breeze. Doing a few tidying jobs in the garden:

• Cutting back the old leaves from the hellebores so we can see the flowers - and indeed the little buds are already showing colour.
• Clearing the overgrown reeds from the little pond. I'm always worried about disturbing the hibernating frogs and newts but it has to be done to stop the pond getting smelly.
• Covering the already-emerging rhubarb with compost to protect from the frost.
• Removing the dead leaves from the hostas which are lying on the gravel and getting soggy and messy with all the rain.
• Trimming the climbing roses which seem to have ambitions to reach the sky.
• Having a big bonfire!

Autumn flowers

It's really Autumn now - cold nights (2-3 degrees C) and bright sun over the weekend, but today is grey and misty. The leaves on the trees and shrubs are beginning to turn and some are even falling. The plum trees are completely bare of leaves. There are still a few bright spots with these late bloomers:

Miniature Cyclamen

Japanese Anenomes

Michaelmas Daisies

Rose flower, bud and bright red rose-hips

Garden Babies

I'm sitting in my studio being entertained by a couple of young robins - small, round, fluffy and spotty. They are clearly only a day or so out of the nest and still fluttering and looking for mum to feed them. They've learned one good thing - that roses can provide a protein-packed meal of aphids. I like them!

All the birds seem to be doing well with large and multiple families. Blue-tits and great-tits nested in the warm weather in early spring (some in our bird-box on the summer house) and have had further broods. Each afternoon we get a crowd of noisy jackdaw youngsters (still haven't got their grey helmets) joined by young magpies and jays. 


The most fun are the baby squirrels. We had mum feeding for a few weeks - looking rather harassed towards the end - and now we have 3 cheeky youngsters getting up to all kinds of acrobatics to feed on the peanuts on the bird table. How do they eat hanging upside down by their toes?  

Roses

Our garden has many different types of roses - climbers, ramblers, bushes, miniature and roses round the door. Some have been blooming for a few weeks and others are just getting going now. They are lovely - but I'm not much good at looking after them. They seem to get a lot of black spot - this year especially perhaps because it's been so wet. The previous owners who designed and built our lovely garden planted roses at the base of all the big trees so we have roses in the magnolia, the silver birch, the maple, Korean fir.

Here are some photos of roses around our garden:

I love this one that looks like it's been painted - but it has lots of prickles!

Bunches of little pink & white flowers

Climbing roses in the silver birch

Big floppy pink roses with lovely perfume

The small pinky-white roses round the front door are looking rather sad this year I usually have to fight the greenfly in the spring and caterpillars later in the year. But this year the leaves are brown and not many flowers at all so I haven't taken a photo. This what they are supposed to look like.